In the following essay, Ross, Berryman, and Tate investigate whether “The Open Boat” is based on a true story and provides an analysis of the first paragraph and the cast of characters in the piece.

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The other stories we have studied have been definitely stories, invented things. Babel's epic figure Benya Kirk is said to have had an original, or model, in some actual Odessa gangster, but how fully the author's imagination is at work in that story we have seen. A story like Hemingway's “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” comes to us as almost pure invention. Even if Hemingway once happened...